


Herding Cats

by Who_First



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Animal Transformation, Cats, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-03-18
Updated: 2012-03-18
Packaged: 2017-11-02 04:22:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/364922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Who_First/pseuds/Who_First
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s a very long day at the office after Loki decides to play Mischief God</p>
            </blockquote>





	Herding Cats

It was the first time ever, in a very long career that you didn’t have high enough clearance to know about, that Coulson was late for the meeting. To be specific, and fair, you couldn’t even place the blame on him for being late as Fury had asked him four and a half minutes before it started to go retrieve some paperwork that hadn’t been delivered for the briefing.

The resulting sight upon opening the door to the conference room was that perhaps there was a good reason to be late.

In reality his gun was drawn and aimed the instant he saw Loki standing in the room, hands on hips, as he sent Coulson a vaguely irritated look.

“You are nine point forty-two seconds late Agent.” Loki’s eyes narrowed as he looked around the chairs at, _oh gods please not that_. “I had been hoping for the entire set.”

Coulson was not going to look away from the god of _mischief_ no matter how tempting it was. Not that keeping his gun trained on the god would be of any use anyway.

“Well.” Loki rubbed his hands and looked infinitely smug as he had no problems glancing around the room. “I think this will work out much better. Have a lovely briefing Agent.”

The smile Loki gave him as the god vanished was nothing short of the cat who got into the aviary and ate every single one of your thousand dollar canaries.

There was a moment of silence and the caterwauling started. Coulson took a moment to carefully put away his gun, briefly wonder how tasers worked on small animals, and then finally turned his attention to the rooms much smaller and fluffier occupants.

Cats. Loki had turned the avengers, and _Fury_ , into cats.

Coulson started rubbing the bridge of his nose as the noise level started increasing as the cats seemed to realize exactly what had happened and that the Avenger’s were now cats. In fact the only individual that didn’t seem to panicking in some way was the huge hulking black tom cat, the single eye glaring over the smaller cats, exuding pure evil intent.

Fury would be the only man in the universe that was a scary a cat as he was a person.

In fact it was easy to distinguish all of the cats. Natasha was the short furred red cat, with the feathered tail wrapped primly around her paws, and looking like she was meow away from shredding something. Thor would be the yellow cat that looked like a ball of fur with face attached at one end. Stark had to be the small brown cat trying to jump around, and Rogers would be the cat standing on Stark’s tail to keep the bouncing cat in place.

Banner as a cat was almost adorable all scrawny and frightened looking. That was until the small cat seemed to panic, fluff out to twice his size, and become a much larger cat. Even small cats were quite destructive and a cat the size of a dog was…well even more destructive.

Coulson closed his eyes again and started counting to ten as the Hulk kitty rampaged around the room, crashing into the walls and chairs. At least the kitty Hulk caused much less damage.

New cries and chirps dragged Coulson’s attention down, plus there was something sharp jabbing into his ankle, of course being very careful to go under the fabric and hit flesh for maximum attention grabbing. Coulson closed his eyes briefly, honestly was it possible to get any worse, and looked down. The Clint cat, what he assumed was Clint with its fluffiness and slightly smashed looking face giving him the kitty eyes, was looking up at him with the most demanding look. The eyes were huge and he seemed fluffier than previously as he squeaked imperiously.

“Yes Agent Barton?”

The was another round of high pitched squeaks, and yes Clint would be a talkative cat, and then he was wriggling his way up, claws sliding through the suit pants and into flesh, as the cat crawled up Coulson’s pants until he reached their handler’s shoulder. Flopping down to purr on Coulson’s shoulder as he overlooked the other freaking cats.

Clint always had like heights.

“I hope you realize that I liked these pants.” Coulson’s voice was quite dry as he surreptitiously felt for blood dripping out of the holes left from Clint’s trek upwards.

The Fury cat, not something Coulson had ever thought he’d have to say, had moved to sit on his end of the table, warning growls echoing as he glared down a ragged looking brown cat with glowing chest that was leaping around trying to look at its tail.

“Stark sit down. Yes you have a tail and it’s not going anywhere.” Coulson grimaced as the cat froze and looked up with its tail caught between its teeth. “Captain there is no present danger, stand down. Banner keep calm, Agent Romanov stop shredding the reports, and Thor just stay still.”

The cats seemed to do as he said, as much as they ever did as humans, and settled down for the moment at least. Fury was still growling but that too was normal as Coulson carefully took his seat with Clint still wrapped smugly around his neck. Like a fluffy noose.

“Director.” Coulson paused as Fury directed all the malevolence towards him. “Shall I inform the scientists or would you prefer to keep this classified and hope it wears off?”

The was a long silence as all the cats seemed to freeze in thought, the pretty red furred Natasha seemed very horrified at the thought of being seen, even Clint’s claws were sinking through his jacket. Fury was puffing up, a particularly deadly looking cloud of black fur, which said highly what he thought about others finding out.

“Alright.” Coulson sighed inwardly, this was going to be a long day, a _very_ long day. “I’ll retrieve the previous studies done by the science department.”

Because Loki turning the Avengers in to animals, and occasionally the opposite sex, was nothing new. The science departments, normally Banner and Stark though, and they had lots of theories and ways of attempting to change the affected back. Sadly it was always safer to just wait for Loki to get bored in a few days.

“Along with some food.” He amended at the anxious sounding chorus of cat cries. He went to lift Clint of his shoulders, being very nicely rewarded with the claws once again sinking into flesh, and sighed again. Really at this rate he was going to resemble a drug user. “Agent Barton… classified doesn’t work if you insist on coming with me.”

His only answer was Clint’s raspy tongue against his ear as the cat-ified agent started purring. More sighing, _well it’s not like anyone would question him walking around with a cat across his shoulder_ , and stepped towards the door.

“I will be back soon with food.” He took one last look around the room at the various catvengers. This would not end well. He knew it. “Just stay here and please don’t cause any problems.”

At least finding food, fresh fish for the cats, was easy enough to acquire. What else were the junior agents for?  And he was right about no one daring to ask why there was a fluffy cat around his neck. Not that it was important, as Coulson was much too busy trying to hurry back to the conference room. Hopefully before all hell broke loose.

He didn’t make it.

Coulson wasn’t quite sure what insanity prompted him into thinking that the Avengers might actually be easier to handle in their current forms. Of course they weren’t. And that’s why the conference room was empty of any Avengers, cat version or otherwise.

Clint started purring louder as Coulson swore under his breath.


End file.
